A few weeks ago the guys at JetBrains/IntelliJ announced the availability of IntelliJ IDEA licenses that they were making available free of charge to qualifying open source developers. See http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/opensource/ for details.

I already own a current license for IntelliJ IDEA and that license allows me to do whatever development I like (personal, commercial, open source, whatever). I can even install that license on as many machines as I like as long as I am the only person using them. Contrast that with the more limited open source license which is only allowed to be used for open source development and may be limited further to only being used on development of open source projects that the guys at IntelliJ approve. I am not exactly sure about that last part, but the license is limited to open source work. Anyway, because I already own a less restrictive license, the free license doesn't really buy me anything, but I wanted to participate in their program, so I submitted a request based on my involvement with JarSpy. Shortly after sending the request I got an email response letting me know that they have received lots of requests and that each one needs to be evaluated individually and that will be time consuming. I wasn't too worried about it so I saved the email and went on with my business.

Fast forward to today. Today I received an email from them letting me know that they have approved my request and are issuing me a free license. Whooo Hoo! In a way, this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. In another way, I am still glad that they are extending this offer and that they are not being overly restrictive about it.

I hope that this helps IntelliJ IDEA continue to grow in its popularity and subsequently leads to its continued life of innovation.